Heathcote defines Rolling Role for the 'Rolling Role' series of video tapes she recorded in 1993. She worked with teacher Claire Armstrong Mills on planning and creating this series.

What is Rolling Role?The concept of Rolling Role is to involve different groups or classes in building a community that then faces some kind of change. The initiators create a common context and agree to the key features, affairs and concerns of the community. The students/children are then involved in building the community, the lives, events and artefacts of it and add to developments. Work is often left incomplete so another group can take it forward and continue the drama. Heathcote suggested this work lends it self to sharing through something like a website. At some point change and a disturbance should be introduced which the community needs to respond to.fromDorothy Heathcote – Contexts for Active Learning, Four Models (14 pages) pdf. In this seminal article Professor Heathcote introduces her four models for forging links between schooling and society: Drama used to explore people; Mantle of the Expert;Rolling Role; and the Commission Model